


a ghost in your eardrum

by labeledbones



Category: Eyewitness (US TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 11:44:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9818966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/labeledbones/pseuds/labeledbones
Summary: It’s been five years, and suddenly Lukas finds himself incapable of sleep.Sleeplessness, a phone call, a decent helping of angst.





	

**Author's Note:**

> (Title is from "When You Sleep" by Mary Lambert.)

It’s been five years, and suddenly Lukas finds himself incapable of sleep. He’d spent the year after everything not being able to ever fall asleep properly. He’d spend hours staring at his ceiling just trying to even out his breathing. When he did finally fall asleep, he’d sleep restlessly and wake up exhausted. They gave him pills for it but they knocked him out so totally that he’d sleep for an entire day and would still feel exhausted. Sometimes his dad would let Philip stay over and only then did he get any real sleep. Only when Philip stayed up with him trading stories about their mothers - Lukas so he could remember and Philip so he wouldn’t forget - did he get any sort of restorative sleep, his head on Philip’s chest, letting the sound of Philip’s heart steady the beat of his own. 

He thinks maybe now it’s being on the road, unfamiliar hotel rooms, foreign cities, people he know but doesn’t really know in any real sense of the word. 

He’s doing what he loves, but there’s so much isolation. He is on his bike and he is alone. He is in his hotel room and he is alone. Sometimes there are dinners out with the people who work for him: his agent, his manager, random representatives from various sponsors. But they aren’t friends, not really. 

And he doesn’t have Philip anymore. Hasn’t heard his heart beat in years. 

So maybe it’s plain loneliness that has the fear coming back to him. Only he doesn’t know what he’s afraid of this time. There’s just a dread that settles in his stomach every night, something that has the skin on the back of his neck tingling. And it gets worse the second he closes his eyes. 

He comes home when the circuit's over and he’s back in his old room and he still isn’t sleeping. He stands in front of the bathroom mirror at night and just looks at himself as if he can find the cause of his anxiety’s return in his reflection. As if the answer might be in his wide, terrified eyes, his shoulders high and tense. All he sees is the person he’d spent so much of his life being, the person he thought he’d left behind. Maybe this is who he’ll always be: someone terrified of himself, of what it means to be alive. 

One night he calls Philip without thinking about it. He’s lying in bed, feeling the walls coming in closer and closer and he blindly dials his phone. 

Philip’s voice is groggy when he answers, and Lukas remembers that he’s in London right now for work, and that it’s five in the morning over there. 

“Shit,” he says instead of returning Philip’s greeting. 

Philip laughs, and Lukas wants to cry. 

“Lukas,” Philip says like he’s figuring out the answer to a riddle. 

“Hi,” Lukas manages. 

“Are you okay?” Lukas hears Philip’s mattress creak as he sits up in bed. He takes note that Philip isn’t whispering and so he probably isn’t with someone. 

“Probably not,” Lukas says. 

“Can’t sleep?”

Philip is across the ocean and they haven’t spoken in months, but he is still the person who knows Lukas the best. He still reads Lukas instantly. 

“I don’t know what it is,” Lukas says. “I just lie there and feel like something really bad is going to happen if I close my eyes. It’s just like before except at least back then I had a legitimate reason to be afraid, now it’s like I’m just afraid of existing or something.”

“You’re not going to like my suggestion.”

“No pills. I’m not doing that shit again. I can’t.”

“Okay,” Philip says. “I get that. What about the breathing exercises you used to do?” 

“Not working,” Lukas says. His therapist in high school had taught him all sorts of meditation exercises he could do when he felt scared or panicked. They worked back then, most of the time, but now he finds himself unable to focus on them enough to see results. 

“Do you just want to talk? About whatever?” Philip asks. 

Lukas nods, closing his eyes. “Please.” 

He is trying to imagine Philip right now. The last time Lukas saw him his hair had gotten longer, he’d filled out in a way that made him broader where he used to be all lean muscles and lanky limbs. But right now he can’t conjure up any image of him and it makes Lukas feel hollow and sad. 

“If I ask what you’re wearing right now, will you think I’m coming onto you?” 

“Yes,” Philip laughs. 

“I swear it’s just pure curiosity. I haven’t seen you in so long.” 

“Okay, well I was sleeping and it’s summer so I’m just in my underwear,” he says, and Lukas can hear his coy little mouth.

“Hmm,” Lukas says, pretending that doesn’t make him feel anything. “Gray boxer briefs?”

“Black, actually.” 

Lukas can suddenly only see the small freckle on the inside of Philip’s right thigh. Thinks about how he used to sink his teeth into it. 

They speak at the same time:

“We should change the subject.” Lukas.  
“I still love you.” Philip. 

And then there’s just silence. And more silence. Until Lukas thinks maybe Philip hung up or got disconnected. 

“Are you still there?”

“Yes,” Philip says. “I was waiting for you to say something.”

“A lot of people make that mistake.”

Philip laughs for the third time. Not that Lukas is counting. “When did you get funny?” 

“I’ve always been funny.”

“Yeah, but usually not on purpose.” 

“Oooh, that hurts, Shea.” 

“So,” Philip says, drawing out the word. “Any thoughts on the whole ‘I still love you’ thing?” 

Lukas sighs. “You know I do too.” And then, “I haven’t been with anyone else.” 

“Seriously? In three years? No one?” Lukas hates the pity in his voice, that he doesn’t seem to realize Lukas has no interest in being with anyone but Philip. He doesn’t feel like he’s missing out by not dating or hooking up or whatever else he’s supposed to be doing. He knows what it is to really really love someone and doesn’t see the point in trying to find a flimsy copy of that. 

“And you? Killing it with the dudes, I assume.” He’s joking about it, but only to keep the jealousy down where it burns in his gut. He knows he has no claim on Philip at this point, and that Philip is free to do what he wants, but it still kills him to think of other guys knowing Philip the way Lukas knows Philip. 

“I do okay,” Philip concedes. “Nothing sticks though. I was seeing one guy for about three months and that’s the longest anything’s lasted. And I think that only worked out for so long because he was living on the opposite coast most of the time. We weren’t around each other enough to get sick of each other so we just kept on going until finally I realized I didn’t really want him to come back to New York. So.” 

“Yeah,” Lukas says lamely. 

“I think I keep looking for you in other people,” Philip says in a small voice. 

Lukas takes in a breath and then he says, “I know when we broke up you said we needed to figure out who we were on our own, but the thing is I didn’t know who I was until you came around and I don’t know who I am without you and I haven’t figured jack shit out except that I don’t want to even bother loving anyone else but you.” 

Lukas can hear Philip crying.

“Can we see each other when I get back?” Philip asks. 

“Yes,” Lukas answers immediately. “When?” 

“Two weeks.”

“Fuck.” 

“I know.”

“I just have one local race this weekend. I could fly out after.” 

“I think we should wait.”

“Why?”

Philip sniffs loudly and Lukas can’t stand not being able to touch him right now. 

“I just want to come home,” Philip says. “I want to come home and see you again.” 

“Okay,” Lukas says. “Okay.” 

They hang up and Lukas falls into a deep heavy sleep where he dreams about Philip standing on a bridge with the wind blowing his hair around his face and a smile halfway formed on his lips and that’s the whole dream. This single image of Philip. 

When he wakes up, he’s been asleep for 12 hours and he quickly reaches for his phone, scrolling through his photos until he finds the one he’d dreamed about. He’d taken it years ago, when they were still in high school, still together, and they’d ditched class and gone to the city. It’s Philip standing on the Brooklyn Bridge and he’s about to start laughing at Lukas because Lukas, newly liberated having come out to everyone at school, is telling anyone who walks by: “That’s my boyfriend, isn’t he fuckin’ cute?” 

Philip had been embarrassed as hell, but Lukas had just grinned, taken the picture and then kissed the shit out of him as all those people pushed around them. 

He hasn’t looked at this photo in a while, and he isn’t sure why he’s dreaming about it now. What is his subconscious connecting between this photo and the conversation they’d had? He thinks his old therapist would’ve commented on the bridge, something about crossing over. He thinks Philip would comment on the photo’s ability to communicate Lukas’ love for Philip even though Lukas isn’t physically present.

He sets the photo as his background and sets a calendar alert for two weeks from now that just reads: “PHILIP.”


End file.
